Every Silver Lining Conceals a Black Cloud
by Clorinda
Summary: A young girl's kindness haunts a small boy ... When an eight year old Inuyasha comes to live at the shrine, lives change, and he is bound and entwined with Kikyo's heart, in days of love and loss. Pre canon. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Every Silver Lining Conceals a Black Cloud**

**By** Clorinda

**Rated**: PG

**Category**: General/Angst

**Summary**: A young girl's kindness haunts a small boy ... When an eight-year-old Inuyasha comes to live at the shrine, lives change, and he is bound and entwined with Kikyo's heart, in days of love and loss. Pre-canon. AU.

* * *

**Chapter One**

"Kikyo," the voice was gasping, breathless and desperate. "Kikyo! Kikyo, Kikyo!" A small child hurtled down the dirt road, running furiously through a village that housed an alien race.

"Kikyo!" he cried the magic word once more, his only amulet of protection in a sea of darkness.

People stared at the red blur as he ran past them, and some women tried to cradle him. But he slapped them away, a high, cracked pitch rising in his voice.

"_Kikyo!_"

Those who heard him, murmured among themselves, but none went to call the priestess he sought.

"Oh, Kikyo!"

Stumbling and falling on numb, cramping legs, the child grounded to a halt before the shrine. "Kikyo!"

There was no answer; it was empty.

Desperation rose in his throat, choking him with disappointment and tears. _I have to find her_ ... He started to run again, his urgency and need pushing back all feeling inside him.

He tore past houses and passers-by.

"_Kikyo_!"

_Where was she?_

His cries reached everyone who saw him, and even the young woman kneeling in the backyard of the shrine.

Angry, alone and bitterly resenting Kikyo for abandoning him, the boy doubled back to his empty house. The shrieks of laughter drew away his attention, and hating the happiness in the world, he investigated.

_No_ _one had the right to laugh_, he thought, furiously wiping the tear that trickled down his face. _No one should even smile when She couldn't be happy anymore_.

He rounded the empty shrine, and into the courtyard. Small boys and girls were playing about, their laughter drifting over to his dark shadow, which leaned against the far corner. Amid those children, like the Inchcape rock in the sea, was the most beautiful person he had seen. She was...

"_Kikyo_!"

The vision heard the cry, and her head lifted sharply towards him. Her eyes looked right into his for a stunned second, and then she was rising, the children falling away from her, and he was running into her open arms.

He flung himself at her, and she caught him easily, holding him tightly like her own son. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, arms wrapped around her like he didn't want to let go. He was crying openly, pride not there anymore ... _but he was safe now_...

"_Kikyo_..." he sobbed, shaking in her arms. "_Kikyo_..." Her name spilled out like his protest, consent, grief and sanctuary.

The other children were crowding around, not quite daring to come too close. The flowers they had given her were lying loosely scattered, but she could see nothing but him.

She stroked his back and held him closer. "_There_, _there_, _Inuyasha_," she murmured, rocking him gently, not swaying with his weight. "_Let it all out_, _it's okay to cry_... "

"_She's_ gone, Kikyo, _She's gone_."

Kikyo had nothing to say, but only a year ago she had felt this very same tumult of distorted pain and sorrow. Without words she tried to tell him she was with him. She alone knew it was priceless, because she never had a shoulder to cry on in her life.

"_Let it all out_, _Inuyasha_... "

* * *

"How is he?" a clear chirping voice asked.

"Asleep," answered another, low and calm.

Inuyasha struggled slightly, fighting away sleep. Achingly vague and dizzy, he sat up from where he was lying with his head in Kikyo's lap. His eyes hurt, and bright flecks exploded when he tried to focus his sight. His cheeks felt dry and stiff where tears had traced their course.

Kikyo's gentle hands eased him up. He stood and looked at her, barely taller than her kneeling figure. She smiled at him, although he could not read it.

"Hi, there," someone else said.

Turning, he saw a younger girl of twelve.

"I'm Kaede," she said, taking his hand in hers, both of hers. "You must be Inuyasha." He didn't draw away.

He was in the shrine, he could tell. And through the window, he saw it was night.

It all came flooding back to him. It suddenly hit him like a physical wave.

_Dead_. His mother was dead.

Helpless and uncertain, he looked at Kikyo.

This time, her eyes smiled too.

"You can stay here," she said. "It'll be just you and me, how does that sound?" She spotted her sister. "Oh, and Kaede too, but she'll stay away most of the time. Only you and me— do you like that?"

Over his head, Kaede shot an angry glare, but Inuyasha was too overwhelmed by the promise of happiness to care, or even notice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

When Kikyo made the unconsulted decision to take Inuyasha in, she knew it would not be easy. For the simple reason that Inuyasha was not a normal child.

Although his mother was human, his father had been a demon. Inuyasha's half-brother was one himself too, but even if Kikyo had known where he was, she would not have let go of her ward.

He was _hers_.

Kikyo was still quite young, merely seventeen, and already she had stepped into her mother's skin, and adopted her role in the shrine, both towards God and towards Kaede. The transformation that took place in a year had not been easy, and often she had looked longingly at the village girls, wishing for what would never come.

She felt a fierce sense of duty towards Inuyasha who had no family, and she had felt it from the day she had first met him, bold and brave for his age.

Her mother had been at alive then, and her father obliged to stay home. It could not have been more than three years since that strange morning.

She remembered now that Kaede had been sitting her days away at home with a broken leg, and her mother asked her to get flowers to brighten the silent hall of worship.

Reluctantly, Kikyo had gone, and Mayumi with her. The trees around the village did not bear good flowers, except the big _sakura_, which was not yet in full bloom. The girls had gone quite far, until the end of one of those cliffs.

Mayumi had been tired, and was looking wistfully at the river below. "I wish I could take a plunge," she had said. "I'm so completely worn out to bits."

"So why _don't_ you go ahead and jump," Kikyo had said that laughingly. "Hey, maybe those jagged rocks will be your reception committee."

Flat on her stomach, Mayumi had tried to glimpse the rocks, when she sighted the flowers growing on a ledge, about a foot below, brightly-hued and fresh.

Eagerly, she had called out, and kneeling the first thing that Kikyo saw was the tiny bundle on the river bank. She remembered the shaking quality of her voice, she hadn't even known the quiver was possible.

The bundle turned out to be a body, when she went down there alone: the body of a very small boy. He looked about five years of age, and he had long, white hair that was streaked with his own blood.

He looked like a bloodstained angel.

Out cold, but when he jerked awake, he shrieked out in vivid terror:

"Demons!— Don't let them kill me, Father! Save me. Please don't let them kill me!"

Paranoia had gripped him so tightly, that it took minutes to dissipate. The boy had leaned against Kikyo ion the circle of her arms, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.

Mayumi's head had ducked away from over the cliffs, and she had come running down the steep, narrow path. Absolutely worried and thoroughly tactless, she had cried out unthinkingly, the first thing that came to mind.

"Is that child half-human?"

Half-_human_ she had said, not half-_demon_. It reminded "that child" who he was, although surprise outweighed the shock in Mayumi's voice.

"Kikyo," she had said, her eyes wide. "Who is he?"

Before she had been able to answer, the boy broke away, backing away a few feet, anger and haughty shreds of his dignity, blazing in his strange golden-coloured eyes that shined brightly through his tears.

He had turned, and run before they could stop him. Only his footsteps in the sand remained.

"Should we follow him?" Mayumi had asked cautiously, glancing apprehensively sideways.

Kikyo recalled her own words: "No, it's best if we let it go," and shaking her head. "Did you get the flowers?"

Later, she asked the villagers about the boy.

One of them said that a powerful dog demon's first-born had that long white hair and war marks upon his face. That had been Inuyasha's half-brother, and the man told her the dog demon, Inutaisho apparently, was many years dead.

She had honestly never expected to see Inuyasha again, although she pricked up her ears when conversation turned to the dog demon's second wife. Kikyo had caught a passing glimpse of her, and she saw the face of a proud noblewoman.

Three years had gone by, until that afternoon behind the shrine when that orphan remembered who she was and how she held him.


End file.
